Following its yearly assessment, the CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team), the apex cyber security division under the ministry of information technology of India, found that cyber crime in the country has accelerated about 50 times since 2004.

CERT's report tries to say that the highest growth has occurred in computer related crimes that attack e-commerce businesses and financial service on the Net.

A hacker's attack on the computer system at Otago University has prompted a police investigation into an e-mail scam there, as reported by NewstalkZB on April 16, 2008.

The hacker infiltrated the system in March 2008 and used it to distribute hundreds of personal e-mails, purportedly from the head of a department.

Commtouch report entitled, "2008 E-mail Threats Trend Report", released on April 7, 2008 indicated that over the months of January-March 2008 there has been a growing trend for malware developers and spammers to leverage authentic Websites to get around e-mail filters.

The e-mail system of UA (University of Arizona) has been subject to a phishing scam during recent weeks, tricking people to disclose their personal information that malicious attackers could use for illegal purposes, as reported by THE WILDCAT ONLINE on April 8, 2008.

According to e-mail security and hosting firm, IE Internet, while the levels of spam spiked sharply in March 2008, the month saw a continuous fall in virus attacks.

ANZ Bank of Australia has issued a warning to its customers to look out for phishing e-mails from a new scam that is targeting the bank's customers, as reported by SCMagazine on April 7, 2008.

Elaborating on the phishing e-mail, the bank said that it addresses ANZ customers and tries to scare account holders who think that somebody tampered with their account.

In the month of March 2008, spam reached a mean of 81% of the total e-mail traffic with an unprecedented peak of 88%. Compared to that, the first half of 2007 saw 65% of spam and the second half 70%, according to Symantec, the security software provider, in its "State of Spam" report for April 2008 as reported by ITweb on April 4, 2008.

In its latest Intelligence Report, MessageLabs has held the Storm Botnet squarely responsible for a fifth of the total spam mails worldwide.

According to a report titled, "2008 internet security trends" from IronPort Systems, 2007 had experienced over 83% of spam mails carrying a Uniform Resource Locator (URL), maintaining the trend of combining various malware techniques, as reported by canoe money on April 7, 2008.

The officials of the "Bank of Travelers Rest", based in Greenville, South Carolina, have alerted people that the bank's name is being misused in a phishing scam, as reported by WYFF4.COM on April 4, 2008.